Mr. Tyzik

Mr. Tyzik (a.k.a. The Headcrusher) is a character portrayed by Mark McKinney on the sketch comedy show Kids in the Hall. He is a lonely man who disapproves of seemingly everyone, especially those he considers business men and trendy people. He calls them "flatheads" because in his mind their heads deserve to be crushed. He is more than willing to help by pretending to crush their heads from a distance with his fingers, using forced perspective, while enthusiastically declaring "I'm crushing your head! I'm crushing your head!" in a high-pitched nasal voice with a slight eastern European accent then making a crushing noise. Because of this he is often referred to as the "Headcrusher". In his own words: "Not everyone deserves to have their head crushed, just 99.99999% of them." When Mr. Tyzik is not actively crushing someone's head, he is talking to himself about why someone near him deserves to have their head crushed.

Headcrushing

Mr. Tyzik usually sets up a cheap folding lawnchair in front of a busy location such as a business square or a club. He sits in the chair and verbally expresses disapproval of each individual he sees and "crushes" their head.

He sometimes goes to great lengths in order to crush someone's head. In one sketch he even sets up a trap to lure particularly gullible would-be nightclubbers with pulsing party music and a series signs offering "Girls--->" down an alley and up into a hidden, suspended room. When the victim eagerly sticks his head up the hatch, Mr. Tyzik strikes, "crushing" his prey and marking down another head crushed.

Another memorable sketch with the Headcrusher was when a street tough came up to him and broke the hand he uses to crush people's heads. This caused him to go into an extreme panic. The remainder of the sketch focused on his attempts at rehabilitation, and concluded with him exacting his revenge on his attacker, naturally, by crushing his head. (Note: This was also the sketch that revealed his name to be Mr. Tyzik.)

Variations

In one sketch, Mr. Tyzik's girlfriend, Mischa (played by Kevin McDonald), came over. He was putting on a play with his fingers when she interrupted him; he got upset. He crushed her head. Then she taught him the amusement of putting your thumb over the head of a person in your eyesight and pretending that the person is not there. She would say, "There is nobody home." This is very similar to Headcrusher's pastime.

In another sketch he confronted a man (also played by Kevin McDonald) who was "crushing heads", or rather, "pinching faces" on his turf. (Mr. Tyzik could actually tell which people had already been crushed or pinched.) They had a battle where Mr. Tyzik was trying to crush the man's head and the man was trying to pinch Mr. Tyzik's face. At one point, due to the camera angle, the man's fingers are about to crush Mr. Tyzik, but Mr. Tyzik pries the apparently larger fingers away with great effort. The camera switches quickly between the two views as both men run away from the fingers of the other.

On stage

Mark McKinney played the Headcrusher live when The Kids in the Hall did their "Tour of Duty" in 2000, and again at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal in 2007. During the skit he ran around with his fingers in front of a camcorder crushing the heads of certain members of the audience (and, in one Montreal skit, the other four members of the Kids in the Hall). The crushing was displayed on a big screen behind him and looked exactly like the original sketches. He shone the light into the nosebleed section and apologized for the people who got such poor seats. Nonetheless, their heads were crushed.

Morality

Mr. Tyzik's behaviour is eccentric and very judgmental to say the least, and he apparently has no friends or family that he associates with. However, he is arguably still a basically good and moral person who only somehow has become convinced that he is stuck in a world of boring and immoral people, striking back at it through the only means available to him. In one sketch he pauses his head-crushing to help a devastatingly drunk "trendy" girl who has passed out in a parking lot, presumably after having been abandoned by her boyfriend. In another, he stops to ask a little boy in a suit what he wants to be when he grows up. Mr. Tyzik knows that the boy's mom dressed him that morning but when he finds out the boy actually wants to be a businessman, he crushes the boy's head, after which he is overcome with guilt. He then proceeds to go to church to confess.

References in Popular Culture

The Headcrusher was referenced in season 3, episode 11 of "Gilmore Girls" where before leaving a seminar Lorelai pauses to "crush" a person's head on the video they are showing.

"Invader Zim" also has a similar "crushing heads" reference. While giggling, the lackey robot GIR does a similar head crush to his master, Zim. This reference probably occurred because Kevin McDonald performs the voice of Almighty Tallest Purple and other minor parts of "Invader Zim". Kevin McDonald was another member of Kids in the Hall who often was other various characters in the numerous sketches featuring Mr. Tyzik's head crushing.

In the Stargate SG-1 episode "Prometheus Unbound", Daniel Jackson "crushes" Vala Mal Doran's head on a security monitor after being frustrated by her antics.

ee also

Forced perspective